The Kitchen Cooked story goes back to the 1930's. Today, the company has branched out into a range of snack varieties and flavors beyond the original chip. (FRED ZWICKY/JOURNAL STAR FILE PHOTO)

With Depression pushing in hard, Flossie Howard picked up a potato.

She peeled and sliced it by hand, then cooked the chips in a small, cast-iron kettle. She repeated the process until she got the recipe right in her Farmington home. When neighbors began gobbling and buying up her chips like mad, she and her family moved the burgeoning business to a former church in town.

Area communities clamored for the chips, and sales of Kitchen Cooked soared. For four decades, the family churned out chips. But when Flossie Howard’s health failed, the company was sold to Richard Blackhurst of Hanna City.

In 1976, to expand production, a potato chip factory was built in Bushnell; two years later, another factory was built, in Farmington. The company’s 90 employees make multiple varieties of snacks, including pretzels, cheese curls and tortilla chips (available online: kitchencooked.net).

In 2003, Esquire magazine, in an article titled, “The Best Potato Chips You Never Tasted,” ranked Kitchen Cooked chips second in a national taste test of regional chip makers. The writer described the chips as “almost too beautiful to eat.”

6 Comments

I lived in Glasford. hanna city and Farmington area and I think I had them long befor you city slickers had them. boy are they good . I think they were even better back then, at one time there was a roomer that a big company bought them. we all felt they would stop making them

Back in 1971 when I got my driver’s license, I would take a carload of buddies from Morton, and we would head out to the Farmington root beer stand just to buy 10 cent bags of the then-called “Howard Potato Chips!” We never had a chip like those before, so we drove the distance (but didn’t tell our parents!)

They may taste great but do u see what they are cooked in? Why do companies choose to use such unhealthy oils to cook in? Very contradicting to b advertising this product for the Breast Cancer cause don’t u think? And yes I’m a Breast Cancer survivor!